A nurse suspected of swiping powerful painkillers from St Helier Hospital’s accident and emergency (A&E) department has been suspended.

Sarah Louise Brown was found guilty of misconduct at a Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) fitness to practice hearing.

She misappropriated dozens of packets of DF118 – dihydrocodeine – and falsified drugs records while working in the A&E between June and December 2008.

The NMC suspects, she was taking the drugs for her own personal use.

The senior nurse was caught after the hospital became suspicious of the amount of strong painkillers recorded as being given to patients.

Alarm bells rang when more than 100 Tramadol tablets were used between one Friday and the following Monday.

As a result a number of strong painkillers were locked in a store cupboard and treated as if they were controlled drugs, with them having to be signed for by at least two staff.

But in an audit of subsequent records, a number of discrepancies were found with prescriptions of the drug for patients to take home with them on discharge.

Problems included a lack of supporting documentation, unrecognisable counter signatures by staff who allegedly countersigned for the drugs, drugs being signed out to elderly patients for whom they could pose a health risk, signing out the drugs to patients after they had been discharged, and other time and date discrepancies.

When interviewed as part of the trust’s investigation into whether Miss Brown had misappropriated the tablets she confirmed in some cases it was her signature in the log book, but denied ever signing medication out for herself or colleagues, claiming the discrepancies were mistakes.

At a fitness to practice hearing held on October 27 and 28, Miss Brown, who did not attend the hearing, was found guilty of 15 misconduct allegations.

Three further counts against her were not proved.

She was given an interim order, suspending her from working as a nurse for 18 months and now has 28 days to appeal.